Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergei Lavrov took part in an interview with Tucker Carlson, an American independent journalist, a few days ago. Lavrov explained that in March 2022, Moscow and Kyiv held a series of talks in Istanbul, Turkey, to find common ground to end the conflict in Ukraine.
During the interview, Lavrov revisits Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in February 2020. He presents a perspective on the events that has hardly ever been considered by the North American media.
Lavrov explains that Moscow intervened in Ukraine to protect the rights to self-determination of the Russian population, who, despite the Minsk agreements, were deprived of their right to practice their culture, speak their language, and practice their religion. He also emphasizes the importance for Russia that Ukraine remains a non-militarized country, that is, having no military base, whether Russian or NATO.
In January 2022, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Olekiy Danilov, stated that compliance with the Minsk agreements meant the destruction of the country because it was signed under threat from the Russians with the agreement of the Germans and the French.
The text of the protocol of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014 temporarily granted local autonomy in the Donetsk oblasts. Indeed, this is the Ukrainian territory where the Russian minority is dominant. During the interview, Lavrov emphasized that the self-determination of a minority is recognized by the United Nations Security Council and by the majority of states around the world.
According to Lavrov, the Istanbul agreements were not rejected, they were approved by the head of the Ukrainian negotiating delegation, which means, according to him, that they were satisfactory enough for Ukraine.
Russia has never refused and is always ready to continue peace talks and the Istanbul agreements remain on the table and can serve as a basis for the continuation of these negotiations.
Last week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready to accept NATO protection guarantees initially limited to the territories controlled by Kyiv in order to “put an end to an end to the war”. According to Zelendsky, the war is led by Russia.
In a world of instabilities where each day it seems like democracies are scrambling it would be wiser to not create more chaos with the present situation.
Maybe the UN Security Council could intervene through the mobilization of some sort of Multinational force that would guarantee the control of Kyiv on his territories. In this way, the West would not provoke a war beyond Ukraine’s borders and bring more instabilities and Russia and Ukraine could regain their negociation through the Istanbul agreements.
The deterioration of the relations between Ukraine and Russia
The relations between Ukraine and Russia have deteriorated way before 2022. In 2014 the Ukraine government declared the referendum in Crimea to annex the territory to Russia illegal according to the Constitution of Ukraine. Many countries around the world didn’t recognize the result of the referendum because of the presence of Russian forces in Crimea.
According to the official result from the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was a 97 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation, with 83 percent voter turnout, and from Sevastopol there was also a 97 percent vote for integration with Russia, with a 89 percent voter turnout. (source wikipedia)